Hey guys, I am at the Darasuram Temple in India and let's take
a look at this sculpture of a woman with 8 legs. This is a flexible acrobat
with one head, two hands and four bodies. It is better to watch it in the video below.

This is the 8 legged acrobat sculpture in its entirety

Now if I cover the rest of the legs except the top two legs, she is balancing her body weight on the floor with 2 hands. And both her legs are above the head. This is the first position, as seen below.

This is the first position

Now if I cover the other parts, except these 2 legs, this is a different position. Now, both these legs are also up in the air, but while her head is facing us, the body is twisted to the side, as seen below.

This is the 2nd position

If you cover the parts except the 2 legs on this side, you can see the other position. This is the third position, as seen below.

This is the 3rd position

Now, look carefully and you'll see 2 outstretched legs on the floor. If you cover everything else, you can see the woman doing a split (see below). Notice the cute, naughty smile on her face, showing how proud she must have been of her body.

This is the 4th position

This is not all, because you can see many other positions, if you cover legs in various combinations. In modern day talent shows, you can see people performing these types of flexible acrobatics and getting enormous attention. This sculpture is at least 850 years old which proves that these types of performances existed in India a long time ago. If you look at the background, you can see women dancing on one side and a man on the other. This was probably some kind of a stage performance where the woman is showing her acrobatic skills. The sculptor has masterfully carved all these positions to match just one face.

A juggler is sitting on top of an acrobat - extremely corroded sculpture :(

There are other sculptures in this temple with much more complexity. Here, a woman is sitting on top of the acrobat, apparently juggling and creating more complex positions. It is a shame that corrosion has taken over and you can't see the details on many of these valuable sculptures.

A similar sculpture, except this has 6 legs instead of 8.

Yet another sculpture of the acrobat - Was she a celebrity at that time?

This sculpture only has one 2 legs, however you can confused easily - Are the legs down are up?

Here is my question to you: Isn't is obvious that she does not actually have 8 legs and the sculptor carved them to show different positions? I ask this, because, this answers the question to why Indian Gods have so many hands. Take a look at any Indian God and you'll see more than 2 hands. The sculptors in ancient times must have tried to show different positions and they carved multiple arms to show all the weapons and things they used. This is the only way to give a lot of information in a sculpture which cannot show moving images as opposed to a modern day video.

How man hands did this God have? Two or Four?

However as time went
on, this logical way of thinking somehow disappeared. Nowadays, they use it to
show power and create shock appeal. The more number of hands, the better it
gets. And I have seen sculptures where
you can't even count the number of arms. And these arms are just arms, most of
them are empty. This is Avalokitesvara by the way, a very popular god in many
Asian countries. So, if you've ever wondered why Indian Gods have so many
hands, I hope this sculpture answered the question.